World champion Sebastian Vettel took third as the race finished under the safety car when Sergio Perez (Force India) and Felipe Massa (Williams) collided spectacularly on the approach to Turn 1 on the penultimate lap as they battled for fourth.

A poor race for Ferrari: It was not an easy afternoon for Scuderia Ferrari. Fernando dropped a place to eighth at the start, while Kimi moved up one to ninth. After that the two F14Ts ran one behind the other for a while until the first pit stops. Alonso then closed on the leading group but struggled to make any passing moves because of a lack of top speed, while Raikkonen dropped down to 15th after spinning at the hairpin.

The move into the points for the Ferrari duo came on the final lap when Massa and Perez collided and went out, promoting both men up the order by two places. The next Grand Prix is in Austria in a fortnight.

VIDEO

Post-race interview with Kimi

QUOTES

Kimi Raikkonen: “We knew this would not be an easy race, because on this track, we were not fast enough down the straights and we had some problems in the slow corners. On top of that, today I never had a clear track ahead of me, for one reason or another I was always stuck behind other cars. In the beginning I had some problems with the brakes and the handling of my car wasn’t consistent. Then after a few laps, the tyres behaved better, but still with highs and lows. For a lot of laps, I was stuck behind Kvyat’s Toro Rosso and this cost me precious time. Even if at the moment, nothing seems to be going right for us, the new development package has given us more potential and now we must just try and find more consistency.”

Pat Fry: “Tyre degradation had a significant effect on today’s race as did, in more general terms, everything linked to parameters affected by temperature, as today it was, as expected, very hot. The start wasn’t easy, because we were starting from far back and here, it’s almost impossible to overtake. The Safety Car coming out on the opening lap reduced the effect of fuel consumption and then in the second stint, on a clean track, the pace improved, but even so, it was difficult to make up places. Fernando’s first stop saw him get ahead of Vergne in the Toro Rosso, while Kimi lost time behind Kvyat, but in the end, he managed to get past. In the final stint, the group ahead closed up and our pace was very good with Fernando, but it was almost impossible to overtake. We brought some improvements to the F14 T and even though this track did not produce the results we expected, we will continue to work on the development of the car and on this front our approach will not change for the coming races.”

Ferrari lucky to score points – Alonso: “We got some lucky extra points with the DNFs at the end,” Alonso said, when asked by AUTOSPORT if he felt lucky to come away with a top-six finish. “Without the DNFs our positions were probably ninth and 14th. In the first part of the race I was uncomfortable with the balance and we were too slow. In the second part it improved and I was more competitive and I managed to reach the group of front cars, but we were too slow on the straights – that was a little frustrating – I couldn’t pass.”

Alonso came into the weekend hoping to fight Red Bull and said he encountered no real issues with his car in the race, but reckoned it was just too slow to have finished any higher.

“Today I had no problems, everything was perfectly OK in the race,” Alonso added. “We had some issues with the battery and the KERS – we had to turn it up and down again – but this was just something we will need to fix. It only happened in this race, never before, so I don’t think we should be too worried. Even when we turned it up, everything worked OK, but we’re just too slow in the straights.”

“It was a difficult race,” Raikkonen admitted.

“We were stuck behind people and had some brake issues in the beginning.

“Then I spun. The same happened in practice one. For some reason we seemed to get a kick suddenly [from the engine] and I spun.

“Every time I came out of a pitstop there always seemed to be people in front of me.

“In the end the car felt a bit better and was fast. But it was just difficult.”

From somewhere Kimi Raikkonen set second fastest lap right at the end, despite not having particularly fresh tyres

Yet again, Ferrari make absurd strategy call. Alonso barely made it out in front of the huge pack of cars. Of course, Kimi was called in the next lap, as usual (wonder why this time he didn’t come in 1st like Alonso did in Spain — regardless of track position), and made it in the tail of that pack. What the heck! Can’t they just once do something different!?? Call him in much sooner than the rest, for example..
As for the spin, this seemed like impossible thing to happen. I understand these cars have torque, but to spin in such place with tyres totally burning..

The sportsmanship and class of alonso was demonstrated yesterday on tv “on a personal level to stay as far away as I can from my teammate. That ut is what I take home with me(wide smile)”
Go to hell nano!!!

Ferrari is playing favorite to Alonso that is no doubt about it… if Kimi wants to be achieve the result as Alonso he needs to work much much much harder coz i think his team is not as experience as Alonso team. the media is making big topic on the gap between Kimi & Alonso now… frankly not good for Kimi for isure… Kimi cant afford to extend the gap further, he needs to start closing the gap to secure his seat. I hate to say this but this is the fact…. 😦

Looking at this with unbiased perspective we can say that:
– Kimi does have more trouble getting the tyres to work, which probably is also the reason why he has trouble qualifying. This gets him on back foot immediately.
– We can say the race pace is identical with Alonso. Just look at FIA timing.
– Kimi really has been very unlucky this season.

So altogether I must say it looks much, much worse than it actually is. There has been progress all the time, but for one reason or another, it just doesn’t show. Just look at Monaco! Just because of excellent start, Kimi was running 3rd and immediately was pulling away and was the fastest non-Merc driver. It’s so much dependent on track position.

What I do NOT like are the comments like Brundle was saying that Kimi needs to make his luck. How can you really do that!? But if people really think it’s Kimi’s fault of being unlucky then, yes, the situation is quite worrying.

I agree with you about Brundle, but all the Sky presenters are just as bad – they seem to spend lot of time spreading rumours and stirring up trouble, like a bunch of gossipy old women, so it’s no surprise that Kimi has no liking for the media. What made me really angry was Jonny Herbert – he kept talking about whether Jules Bianchi was ready to take Kimi’s place at Ferrari – very disrespectful. Sorry to say, but I don’t think Alonso is a very honourable person – he has done a lot of dirty tricks in the past, both at Renault,/Benetton and also at McClaren.

You are right alonso it is not a honorable person. It is sad for me to say that because he is Spanish like me but he does not know what is the meaning of the word honour among some words with a similar meaning.

Frankly I’m not at all surprised with alonso’s comments, he likes to play politics whenever he can. He is so depressed he looks for scapegoats here and there…..
I dont agree that ferrari are playing dirty tricks on kimi, yes he had that one episode but I think it was more tactical than conspiracy type.
Kimi has closed the gap to alonso, the problem is yes with quali. I dont know why but its so hard for him to warm the tyres, besides he has enourmous handling problems (yes everybody has the same problem but kimi seems to be suffering more)

The situation is far worse than we all are made to believe. Is Alonso the favorite in the team? Yes definitely. Does Kimi lack motivation as a result? Yes, definitely. Is Kimi’s dismal year therefore about bad luck? No, definitely not.

What we are in fact seeing is preferential treatment in it’s purest undiluted form taking place right before our eyes at Ferrari.